Doctor Who ficlet: What if Time Could Run Out?
Title: What if Time Could Run Out?
Characters: The Master
Rating PG
Spoilers: Doctor Who, informed by up to 5x06
Notes: I think it's time to give in and call this a series/WIP now. The ficlets aren't really standing alone, and so far so good on continuing them, however slowly and in small increments. But if I do, what should I call it? ~920 words, follows this and then this.
Except it isn't. Except there is.
It's the end of the world, but the Master is alive, and he's the last person to let something as trivial as a time lock and the potential destruction of all reality if he breaches it get in his way. In this body, forged in the energies of his home, he feels strong, calm, clear-headed.
It's a foreign, long-forgotten sensation.
All around him, chaos and confusion, as though the sane has become the mad, madness, sanity. What would you do if you knew it was your last day of existence? How would you behave if you knew it was your species' final hours, the tantalisingly close hope of a reprieve ripped away once again?
The Master knows his answer: survive.
And more than survive. Find a way out. Not for his people; it's far too late for that, given the choices they've made, and the time that's left. Even he isn't so clever. And nor does he care to find it. The awareness of what they have done to him is still too raw. Striking down Rassilon wasn't nearly enough of a balm to that wound. Betrayal stays with you; the Master should know.
So it's simple. So he's ready.
It's important that he goes unnoticed as he sneaks out of the Panopticon, but in this climate of panic going unnoticed is apparently not a problem, even for an infamous Time Lord wearing a new face and decaying, too-tight alien clothes. Breaking into Rassilon's chambers is also simple, with the great man dead, and his guards scattered. His lock box requires more finesse, but then, the Master is good with technology, and a lock is only a computer with a singular purpose.
He collects the objects he requires, and then all that is left is to find somewhere private to wait out the cracks. Already, he's seen them on another half a dozen surfaces, reassuring him that they are not only fracturing the Panopticon, but the entire world.
It only requires that one large enough appears, opening onto a planet he can use. He keeps to shadows and corners, hugging the walls, avoiding the Chancellory guards who run about in complete and idiotic confusion, and steps sideways at last into a meditation garden. It's a small square tucked away from the main thoroughfare by an offset just large enough to create a tasteful oasis. Screened from the unaccustomed hubbub of the city visually by plantings and aurally by a water feature, it's like a time slide to their past, when the duty of a Time Lord was to watch and to contemplate and remember. It's so still it's as though time flows around it, not through.
The Master traverses the inscription set in the floor, a circle of darker stone, and sits on a pollen-strewn bench, suddenly feeling the pounding of his hearts, not quite in rhythm. There is an unstable power in him still, but it has nowhere to go, and this is not the time. He wills it into a corner of himself, coaxes it into a tight golden ball. Later. Later, he can allow this new body what it needs.
For now...he concentrates on breathing, and on sitting up through the dizzy wave that passes through him. He forces himself to focus on the details of the garden. On the exquisite, out of place stillness of it; on the quiet, almost a silence.
The blossoms are heavy with pollen and petals, an entire wall of Memento Mori flowers hanging golden and freckled in the artificial sunslight. By the fountain, a small but luxuriant swathe of blood-red grass traces a soft and shaggy semi-circle, allowed to grow long and whispering of endless meadows. An elegant, silver tree weeps over the water, dipping into its own reflection. The garden smells ripe, heady, ready to dissolve into late summer's dream of fruit and heat.
After a moment, the Master begins to wonder if he's losing his mind again, seduced by a garden. He stands abruptly, walking away in agitation, but then turns back to the wall, reaches to pull a flower from its vine.
Beneath the lattice of vegetation, a jagged line, large enough to swallow a man, jeers out at him as though through a veil.
It's now.
The Master hesitates. This is, undeniably, his Gallifrey; the air, even while acrid, the gravity, the quality of the light--these are things to which his senses are forever attuned, and which activate in him, with the merest effortless echo, overwhelmingly vivid sensations of home, childhood, safety. It's a biological thing, inescapable.
He will never experience that connection again. This is Gallifrey, lost Gallifrey, and although his exile has lasted lifetimes, this planet...without it, he has only one external point of reference left, and that one he can't trust to stay still.
He has to chase it. The imperative is strong enough to override any uncharacteristic sentimentalism for a cause already beyond his power to repair. Somewhere, on the other side, is the Doctor, in a new body. Having caught a glimpse, he's certain that what he must do, once survival is assured, is to find him.
Standing back, and with resolved determination, the Master opens the fissure into space and time. He looks through it to see that the world beyond is good, and steps through, for the second time leaving his planet and his people to burn and die.
Behind him, as the portal closes, yellow flowers litter the ornate flagstone.
Characters: The Master
Rating PG
Spoilers: Doctor Who, informed by up to 5x06
Notes: I think it's time to give in and call this a series/WIP now. The ficlets aren't really standing alone, and so far so good on continuing them, however slowly and in small increments. But if I do, what should I call it? ~920 words, follows this and then this.
Except it isn't. Except there is.
It's the end of the world, but the Master is alive, and he's the last person to let something as trivial as a time lock and the potential destruction of all reality if he breaches it get in his way. In this body, forged in the energies of his home, he feels strong, calm, clear-headed.
It's a foreign, long-forgotten sensation.
All around him, chaos and confusion, as though the sane has become the mad, madness, sanity. What would you do if you knew it was your last day of existence? How would you behave if you knew it was your species' final hours, the tantalisingly close hope of a reprieve ripped away once again?
The Master knows his answer: survive.
And more than survive. Find a way out. Not for his people; it's far too late for that, given the choices they've made, and the time that's left. Even he isn't so clever. And nor does he care to find it. The awareness of what they have done to him is still too raw. Striking down Rassilon wasn't nearly enough of a balm to that wound. Betrayal stays with you; the Master should know.
So it's simple. So he's ready.
It's important that he goes unnoticed as he sneaks out of the Panopticon, but in this climate of panic going unnoticed is apparently not a problem, even for an infamous Time Lord wearing a new face and decaying, too-tight alien clothes. Breaking into Rassilon's chambers is also simple, with the great man dead, and his guards scattered. His lock box requires more finesse, but then, the Master is good with technology, and a lock is only a computer with a singular purpose.
He collects the objects he requires, and then all that is left is to find somewhere private to wait out the cracks. Already, he's seen them on another half a dozen surfaces, reassuring him that they are not only fracturing the Panopticon, but the entire world.
It only requires that one large enough appears, opening onto a planet he can use. He keeps to shadows and corners, hugging the walls, avoiding the Chancellory guards who run about in complete and idiotic confusion, and steps sideways at last into a meditation garden. It's a small square tucked away from the main thoroughfare by an offset just large enough to create a tasteful oasis. Screened from the unaccustomed hubbub of the city visually by plantings and aurally by a water feature, it's like a time slide to their past, when the duty of a Time Lord was to watch and to contemplate and remember. It's so still it's as though time flows around it, not through.
The Master traverses the inscription set in the floor, a circle of darker stone, and sits on a pollen-strewn bench, suddenly feeling the pounding of his hearts, not quite in rhythm. There is an unstable power in him still, but it has nowhere to go, and this is not the time. He wills it into a corner of himself, coaxes it into a tight golden ball. Later. Later, he can allow this new body what it needs.
For now...he concentrates on breathing, and on sitting up through the dizzy wave that passes through him. He forces himself to focus on the details of the garden. On the exquisite, out of place stillness of it; on the quiet, almost a silence.
The blossoms are heavy with pollen and petals, an entire wall of Memento Mori flowers hanging golden and freckled in the artificial sunslight. By the fountain, a small but luxuriant swathe of blood-red grass traces a soft and shaggy semi-circle, allowed to grow long and whispering of endless meadows. An elegant, silver tree weeps over the water, dipping into its own reflection. The garden smells ripe, heady, ready to dissolve into late summer's dream of fruit and heat.
After a moment, the Master begins to wonder if he's losing his mind again, seduced by a garden. He stands abruptly, walking away in agitation, but then turns back to the wall, reaches to pull a flower from its vine.
Beneath the lattice of vegetation, a jagged line, large enough to swallow a man, jeers out at him as though through a veil.
It's now.
The Master hesitates. This is, undeniably, his Gallifrey; the air, even while acrid, the gravity, the quality of the light--these are things to which his senses are forever attuned, and which activate in him, with the merest effortless echo, overwhelmingly vivid sensations of home, childhood, safety. It's a biological thing, inescapable.
He will never experience that connection again. This is Gallifrey, lost Gallifrey, and although his exile has lasted lifetimes, this planet...without it, he has only one external point of reference left, and that one he can't trust to stay still.
He has to chase it. The imperative is strong enough to override any uncharacteristic sentimentalism for a cause already beyond his power to repair. Somewhere, on the other side, is the Doctor, in a new body. Having caught a glimpse, he's certain that what he must do, once survival is assured, is to find him.
Standing back, and with resolved determination, the Master opens the fissure into space and time. He looks through it to see that the world beyond is good, and steps through, for the second time leaving his planet and his people to burn and die.
Behind him, as the portal closes, yellow flowers litter the ornate flagstone.